Daerijeon

This post is a short discussion of the work I did on my wife’s film adaptation of the Korean short story “Daerijeon” by Djuna. It’s got a free downloadable copy of the soundtrack available for anyone interested.

So, I had a realization the other day, while trying to wrap my brain around this project I’m working on. Essentially, the insight came in two steps. I was talking to my wife about creative ways to get around the fact we’re missing clips and video content that was originally mandated in the screenplay for our current film project. One of the points I made was that, since we cannot reshoot anything, it’s up to us to think creatively about how to rework the script to tell the story, while taking up the challenge of turning the missing pieces into a feature, instead of a flaw. This is something you have to do when you’re working on low-budget indie films anyway, but low-budget indie SF is especially this way.

That’s in the spirit of the original idea for the film, anyway, and, indeed, in the spirit of the original story. See the toy guys in the women’s hands? Those are in the original novella: the women have to hack children’s toys to produce weapons that effectively fight off an alien invasion. (… carried out by brainjacked ansible-using aliens from across the galaxy…)

We took a different angle, of course: our film was supposed to be a subjective presentation of the experience of the interrogation that comes after the main action of the story–the weeks later, when cleanup is mostly done, and the Galactic Federation is trying to figure out what in the bloody hell happened on Earth. Since the Federation’s representatives are many light years away (and FTL travel doesn’t exist in this universe), that means interview via brainjacked ansible uplink.

I knew that when we started shooting. I just didn’t understand the implications till we turned up short on some footage. That shortage led to a revelation. Continue reading →

Hold on! Looks like my students were wrong, and there is one sax tech somewhere in Saigon. Problem is, I’ll have to track him down myself: I went to the music shop my student mentioned to see if they had something that could remove the stuck swab, and they told me that, no, they can’t, but there’s a saxophone repairman in District 10 who can do it. They called him and he confirmed that he could.

The catch? They tried to tell me I couldn’t go there myself, I had entrust the horn to their care. Which, I explained, was out of the question. I said that I would be happy to pay them, but I’d be coming along. But it’s far, they told me, as if that would change my mind. I said I was not going to put my horn in someone else’s hands whom I have never met, who I don’t know, and hope he didn’t screw up the horn. I will be in the room when he removes the swab, at the very least, because I don’t want the octave pip damaged.

(There’s a delicate little “pip” inside the neck; that’s what the swab is caught on. If he tries to ram it out, that’ll bork the horn seriously.)

It boiled down to the shop refusing to tell me who the repairman is because they don’t want to lose future business from me. Which is stupid: I’m pretty sure I found the guy in ten minutes flat searching online, but now I’ll also be determined to tell people not to go to the local shop where I asked first, because they’re zero-sum-minded twits. They want a cut of the repair fee for nothing more than being a contact, which: if you can’t repair the instrument, give me the name and contacts of the person who can. Don’t act like it’s top secret information: that’s just not cool.

Which is why I won’t be going back to Mozart Music in front of the Sky Garden apartments in Phu My Hung. If they’d just given me the information, I’d have had nice things to say. But trying to force me to pay them for something they can’t even fix themselves? Meh.

By the way, the repair (and sax sales) shop I mentioned? In fact, I suspect it’s this guy, going by a post I found on the local saxophonist board. So, you know, it’s not like they had some deep, hidden, obscure secret information. Off to email the guy and see if I can work out a time when I can drop by, get my soprano looked after… and maybe recork my tenor neck, while I’m at it. (Maybe he’ll even let me snake a leak light through my flute, while I’m there?) And he seems to have loads of saxes for sale (temptation!) as well as an array of mouthpieces… maybe I can find something interesting for my soprano there, who knows?

ORIGINAL POST:

Okay, I officially have enough music gear to keep me busy for years to come… but I can’t use all of it.

I managed to pick up my Selmer soprano saxophone, my Yamaha flute, and the Yamaha WX5 wind controller my friend Mark received for me in Seoul… and I also have on hand a bunch of tenor and soprano sax reeds my friend Joe picked up for me in the States, so I’m pretty much set in terms of new challenges.

I‘m in the home stretch of the screenplay I’m trying to wrap up today–a project that anyway I’m not really supposed to be talking about for now, though hopefully at some point I can because it’s interesting, and relevant, and Lovecraftian, and set in Korea–but in any case, since I am busy and can’t discuss it anyway, here’s something else:

My friend Charles attended the recent Cthulhu Festival of Film in Seoul a couple of months ago (at the end of February), and soon after posted his thoughts about the films and the event in general. I haven’t been able to enjoy directly the several Korean-language reviews of the event and the films that have been posted online (though Mrs. Jiwaku gave me the highlights) so this was especially nice to see. It’s a worthwhile read, and though of course I’m biased (having been heavily involved in the making of the film he says that he liked best) his reactions pretty much synch up with mine.

I’m trying to finish that script I can’t really talk about (except in vague terms like this), and Mrs. Jiwaku is putting together a trailer for her most recent short film, titled 자연선택설. (English title: “Environmental Pressures and Species Adaptation” which is actually kind of pseudoscientific, though, well… zombies.)

I also recently uploaded the missing track from the soundtrack for this film. It’s just a clip from the first track, but without the bass and the distorted guitars… a spooky little mood piece. Chances are this is what we’ll also use for the trailer, maybe with a little modification:

Next up? My next big project won’t be film-related at all–I’m starting out on a novel soon, and working through some short stories for now–but Mrs. Jiwaku will be editing together a few things with video we shot in Seoul, before leaving, including 대리전 (“The Great Proxy War”) and a short comedic Lovecraftian thing.

Yeah, this one, which actually features me as an actor:

As for me, I’ll be taking time off from my novel to work on soundtrack music for both those projects, presumably, and have been rolling around ideas for 대리전. (After having recently re-watched Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express, and having been reminded of the Vangelis’ soundtrack for Bladerunner, I think we’ll be shooting for something vaguely in that zone… with ironic results, sometimes–sexy sax and synth bass in incongruous moments–as well as full-on fat-synth layering and probably a bit of chiptune-influenced fun here and there.

In the longer range, though, both Mrs. Jiwaku and I plan to write some scripts: her, a kind of political, multicultural kids’ fantasy set in Korea; mine, a [Lovecraftian] horror story set in 18th century Joseon court.

But we both are also thinking about doing something shorter, set here in Saigon/HCMC (or someplace close) since, after all, we’re here right now.